1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to print job management system and method, and in particular, it relates to method implemented in print shops for customizing color or black and white printing of a document containing color and black and white pages.
2. Description of Related Art
Print shop management systems and programs have been developed and widely used to manage print jobs and workflows in an environment where a large number of print jobs are processed with multiple printers. Examples of such an environment are professional print shops and print/copy departments at large organizations, where a variety of print requests, such as large-volume duplication and large document printing, needs to be processed and completed by utilizing multiple printers within a short turn-around time. These environments are collectively referred to as “print shops” in this application.
In a print shop management process, each printing job typically specifies a source file that electrically contains a document to be printed, and the required printing parameters such as the size, color and the type of the paper on which the document should be printed, the printing resolution, duplex or single-side printing, and certain finishing conditions, such as book, staple, collate printing, etc., depending on a print job requester's needs.
In order to process a large volume of print jobs that each differ in terms of these job parameters, a print shop utilizes multiple commercial grade printers, including black & white and color printers, each with often different limitations on available printer settings, such as the paper size, the paper type, resolution settings, etc. In addition, the print shop employs various finishing devices, such as collators, staplers, hole punchers, folding machines, binding machines, etc.
A print shop (or print job) management process is typically implemented by software or firmware programs executed by digital data processing apparatus such as a control computer or server connected to the printers in a print shop. The print shop management system submits each print job to one or more printers and finishing devices to produce the print job. The job submission may be done automatically by the print shop management system, semi-automatically with certain amount of operator intervention, or manually where decisions of how to submit the print jot to appropriate printers or finishing devices are made by an operator.
The print shop management process and system organizes and manages print jobs using database entries, typically referred to as “job tickets”. A job ticket specifies values of various print job parameters, and associates itself to the source file(s) to be printed. In one particular example, a job ticket may include a job ticket number, ticket name as well as the values of the following groups of various other job parameters: job information settings, basic settings (e.g., number of copies, orientation of paper, color, collate, offset printing, original paper size, output paper size, paper type, paper source, etc.), layout settings, cover sheet, finishing settings, inter-sheet settings, tab-paper settings, image quality settings, and customer information. A job ticket is associated with a source file (i.e. the document to be printed), and they collectively constitute a print job within the print shop management system.
The print shop management software program may include, among other things, a color-split process which splits a document containing color and B/W pages into a color subset and a black and white (B/W) subset, and sends the color subset to a color printer and the B/W subset to a B/W printer. Accordingly, when a document to be printed (sometimes referred to as “the source document”) is mixed with color and B/W pages, it is first determined whether to submit the entire print job (i.e. all pages of the source document) to one or more color printers, or to split the print job into two subsets by submitting the color pages to one or more color printers and the B/W pages to one or more B/W printers. A method for determining whether to split a print job is described in commonly owned, co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/395,583, filed Mar. 31, 2006, entitled “Print Shop Management Method and Apparatus for Printing Mixed Color and Black and White Documents”, which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. Another method for determining whether to split a print job into two sub-jobs that is especially designed for situations where a printing job involves “N-up” printing (multiple pages of the source document to be printed on one sheet of paper), duplex printing (two-sided printing), or mixed paper printing (different paper requirement) is described in commonly owned, co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/529,897, filed Sep. 28, 2006, entitled “Print Shop Management Method and Apparatus for Printing Mixed Color and Black and White Documents”, which is also incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.
In an exemplary color-split process as described in the above mentioned co-pending applications, a print management software application is executed that receives job tickets. A job ticket typically consists of settings that may be applied to the job (and are supported by the printers, generally) and a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file is the document that is printed and to which the job ticket settings are applied. Each job ticket has at least one PDF file attached to it. Another function of the print management software is to read the job ticket settings of a specific job and then match these to available printers that can support the job ticket settings and, thus, can print the attached PDF file.
When a job ticket has a PDF file attached and that job ticket is processed by the print management software, the PDF file is processed by a PDF analyzer, which is a tool that extracts the meta-data of the job. One type of relevant meta-data collected is the color values of the pages. First, the analyzer determines if there are both color and B&W pages in the PDF file; secondly, if there are both types of pages, the analyzer then identifies which of the pages are color pages. Then the program needs to decide how to print the color and B/W pages.
Color pages are expensive to print. If a page only has text on it, it does not necessarily need to be sent to a color printer. Therefore it is desirable to provide the user with the option of removing such pages from the list of color pages. When pages are removed from the list, they default to B&W and will be sent to a B&W printer. Even images/tables/charts with color may need to be printed in B&W to reduce cost. Therefore it is desirable to allow the user to over-ride PDF color values and impose a value of B&W onto any color page, for whatever the reason.
It is also desirable for a print management process to taking into account of duplex printing (i.e., printing on both sides of a page) and “N-up” printing (i.e., taking two or more PDF pages and imposing them on a single printed page). When a PDF file attached to a job has color and B&W pages and if the job ticket has duplex and/or N-Up values selected, it is desirable to provide the user with the ability to apply the user's color printing selection to the duplex or N-Up settings and change all corresponding settings accordingly. For example, if there is a duplex setting for page 3 and 4 as “Color”, and page 3 prints on one side of the paper and page 4 prints on the other side, turning the “Color” setting off for page 3 requires that “Color” also be set to Off for page 4 since the two pages print on the front and back of the same piece of paper. Therefore it is further desirable if the print management program can detect such situations, inform the user via a pop-up message on a GUI, and then, if authorized by the user via the pop-up, automatically correct such issues so that duplex and N-Up print can be done properly and consistently.
In a color-split printing process, for example, described in common-owned applications referenced earlier, when a job comes into the print management software program and contains color and B&W pages, the program will understand that this type of job must be printed through a color-split process in which the user selects a color printer and a B&W printer that are joined together for printing jobs with color and B&W pages. It is desirable to identify the color pages and provide the user with a way to modify the original meta-data values of these color pages so they can be printed as B&W on user-specified pages of the color-split document.
It is further desirable to store both the original PDF color values collected via the meta-data and the customer modified PDF color values, so the user can always default back to the original values at any time the user chooses.